I love men!

I have to stop reading radical feminist writing. I consider myself a feminist, but with two caveats:

1) Some of my best friends are men. The vast majority of the men I see every day are kind, hard-working, intelligent people who respect women. In my world at least, hooting fratboys or growling wifebeaters or crazy fundies are outnumbered 10 to 1 by ordinary Joes doing the best they can to be decent people.

2) Call me a rich white het cis privilegebunny, but I don't feel very oppressed. Sometimes insulted, sometimes worried, sometimes concerned for the oppression of people in other places, but in my own life I just don't feel the boot on my neck. At work, at school, socially, nobody acts like I'm less than human or tries to enforce the Patriarchy on me directly. For me, in my daily life, I don't feel like being female is difficult or painful.

So... my reactions to a lot of radical feminism tend to fall into the following narrow-minded horrible categories:

"Men aren't like that!"
"But I like sex! For me. Not because I've been brainwashed to be a pleasurebot for men, because it feels good in my vagina where I have nerves. And, yes, also emotionally, and there's nothing wrong with that."
"Oh grow some skin. Yes, that was offensive, but it didn't instantly remove all your human rights. Get some freakin' perspective."

And I go nuts when I read stuff like this:
"In a patriarchy, the cornerstone of which is a paradigm of male dominance and female submission, women do not enjoy the same degree of personal sovereignty that men do. This oppressed condition obtains a priori to all other conditions, and nullifies any presumption of fully human status on the part of women. A woman, therefore, cannot freely “consent,” because her will is obviated by her status as a subhuman."

I don't know what kind of women-in-chains Gor crazyworld this author is coming from, but I'm pretty damn sure that no means no, yes means yes, and throwing up your hands and screaming "we're so oppressed we can't even make decisions!" is not actually advancing the cause of female strength and independence.

In fact, it's an example of something I've seen a few times in radfem thought--going so far that they actually come full circle. You see statements like "women aren't able to give consent" and "women just want love, but men exploit it for sex," and you might as well be on the Abstinence Warriors forum--it's the same stereotyping of both men and women and unreasonable fear of sex.

I'm a feminist. I really am, dammit. Our culture is permeated with weird ideas about femininity (and masculinity!) and it desperately does need to change. But if you don't take a realistic worldview and respect the people you're trying to change, you're not getting anywhere. And if you don't have sex until we reach perfect equality, well, buddy, you're never gonna get laid.



EDIT--REQUEST FOR OPPOSING COMMENTERS: Please don't say "Strawman!" or "Radfems don't believe that!" without giving a brief skim of what you do believe on the subject. And don't say "well, we respect women and think inequality is bad," because you get a whole lot more contentious than that when you're on your own turf, and it would behoove you to defend it rather than deny it.